Tag Archives: kitchen

settling in.

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I haven’t meant to not be posting; just so much going on. Here are a couple of snippets from the last week or so. As you can see, we’re starting to settle in.

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My yellow table is back in the kitchen. The things you see on the table and on the walls come from at least 5 different people from all corners of my life, which is pretty cool. (Or at least I think so.)

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This guy. That ear.

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Smitten Kitchen sesame noodles.

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Banana nut espresso muffins from Super Natural Cooking.

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Me in my new home.

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New chair, and my favorite little corner of my room.

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Documenting that I wore blue, purple, and pink all at the same time. (Sort of an unusual color combination for me…)

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Everything on this plate came from the farmers’ market last weekend. Everything!

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august?

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Time for more apologizing. (And for getting used to a new version of WordPress. This is fancy!) I don’t know why I’m not knitting, and I don’t really know why I’m not blogging. But I’m not quite ready to give up on this space, and I hope you’re not ready to give up on me. I’m hoping to get back into a groove one of these days.

Until then, though, you get pictures of what we’ve been up to, both here at the lake house and further afield. Since I last blogged (in June?!), I’ve TAed an intensive 3-week summer course, joined my family for a week on the gulf coast of Florida, spent a weekend in the Catskills saying goodbye to a dear grad school friend who is moving/moving on to take a postdoc, given a paper at my first non-grad-student conference (yay!) and visited my younger brother in Colorado. (Whew!)

Want to see some of that? Here you go:

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During that three-week course, Boh spent a lot of time entertaining himself.

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And there were strawberries.

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Cuddling the papers to grade…

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Frolicking at a nearby park on our way to the farm.

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First farm tomato!

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Delicious.

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Writing.

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Bird-watching, coffee-drinking, breakfast-eating, all from the balcony of the condo my parents rented on the gulf coast of Florida.

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Seashells collected on morning walks with my mom.

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Beautiful beach.

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A snapping turtle greeting me (and Boh — see his nose in the lower left-hand corner?) in the Catskills!

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Catskills relaxation.

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And some more.

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Sam, my brother’s horse.

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Colorado National Monument.

And now — just today, actually — home again, this time for awhile. Time to settle back into lake house life, which I’m hoping will include lots of writing…

Thanks for reading, friends.

bit by bit.

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Preparing for an evening discussion: reading and commenting on the iPad Mini, and drinking tea.

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First chocolate chip cookies since returning home. Made my go-to smitten kitchen recipe, and the house smelled heavenly.

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Boh, lounging in the sun. (He’s in exactly the same patch of sunlight this morning.)

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Breaking in my new flats while knitting stripes. This final ten percent of the blanket is taking forever…

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This polka-dotted blouse was my mom’s in the 80s. I snapped this picture to send to her before heading out to dinner with a visiting professor.

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Boh, keeping me company. He plays with his bone while I knit on my blanket. I’m trying to power through the end of the Hudson Bay Inspired Blanket so that I’ll have more exciting knitting pictures to share with you guys. Happy weekend!

unintended absence…

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Hi, you guys! Apologies for what has been an entirely unintended absence from the blog! I made it to DC on schedule, but accidentally brought a pretty nasty cold/flu with me. My first week was a bit of a blur, and now that it’s been almost three (?!), I’m finally settling into a rhythm. Here’s a little bit of what that looks like:

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National Archives at night. Last night, in fact. Snapped this on my way to meet a dear friend for dinner.

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My office — and my new shiny piece of technology. (I bought an iPad mini, and I love it. It has already been more useful than I could have imagined for my work. I’m reading and annotating articles and drafts, and using it as a second screen while reviewing documents and making notes. Super awesome.) Also, that’s a bowl of tabbouleh. I’m still getting used to packing my lunch every morning. At home, most days I split my work between home and campus or a coffee shop, and head back to the house to walk Boh and make lunch.

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Birds! I don’t intend to share lots of work stuff here, but I figured that knitters might appreciate these gorgeous, vibrant birds. (One of the people I write about in my dissertation was a naturalist who collected a lot of specimens for the Smithsonian.)

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Yarn! Foxflat was in town, and we met up to do some yarn shopping and tea drinking. Hooray for internet friends who become real-life friends!

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Consider this proof of our lovely afternoon (and my inability to keep my eyes open in photos). I have plans to knit a spring cowl ouf of that super happy Quince and Co. yarn. Also, I’m totally psyched about that sweater Katie is wearing — she posted about it here, and it is even more fantastic in person.

Alright, that’s what I’ve got for now. I’m embarrassingly far behind on replying to comments, but it’s on my to-do list. (Which, by the way, I’m working to digitize. I highly recommend Workflowy, and if you want to check it out, use this link, and we’ll both get a little extra space. No pressure, of course.)

Happy Groundhog Day — and happy weekend! More soon.

FO: nanny’s mittens.

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These little mittens have a big story. Long-time readers may remember when my grandmother, Nanny, gave me all sorts of old patterns and yarn. I donated the yarn and kept the patterns, along with a small ziplock bag with these mittens inside. They were finished, except for the thumb of the second mitten. (And there was a third, which looks to me like something went a bit awry with the beginnings of the thumb.)

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It didn’t take much to improvise a thumb for the second mitten, and now I’ve got a pair. I’m extra excited about this because there’s a great-grandchild in our family now, and this will be her first Christmas. I’m planning to take these mittens to show Nanny, and to remind her that she did most of the knitting, and to ask her if she wants to be part of my surprise: we’ll wrap them up and give them to our family’s newest addition, my cousin’s 11 month-old daughter. The mittens will be a bit too big for her this year, but I’m not sure Nanny will be quite as lucid next Christmas. Sewn, knitted, and crafted gifts from her were always a big part of our family Christmas celebrations when I was little, and I love the idea that there will be something made by her hands under this year’s tree.

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And there’s this guy, holding onto his favorite bone. It has nothing to do with the mittens, but I had to share.

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View from the porch, sometime last week.

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Homemade hummus with toast.

Stay tuned for more holiday knitting…if I finish it in time!

smitten.

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I’ve been drooling over Deb’s Smitten Kitchen Cookbook all week. On Saturday morning I made latkes and they were amazing. Best I’ve ever made. I particularly appreciate that Deb did not specify how many people this particular recipe serves, because I ate them all.

Today, I made my coffee and flipped through the book again. This dutch baby caught my eye. I’ve never made one before, but the results were picture-perfect. (And oh-so-tasty.)

And just now I mixed up a simple and yummy broccoli slaw to counter the decadence in my weekend food intake. I really think you might need this cookbook. (Full disclosure: Not only did I buy one for myself; after looking through mine, I also purchased three more as gifts for my mom, my chair, and a dear friend. All have birthdays in the first half of November.)

And, you know, because this is, at least in theory, a knitting blog, look — knitting! Those are not my hands; they are the hands of my dear friend J. She’s such a fast learner. After one evening of basic instruction in casting on, knitting, and purling, she practiced until she’d used up the partial ball of yarn I gave her. On Friday we went yarn shopping, and that evening, J. cast on her first project (on dpns, no less!), a pair of toasty fingerless mitts! Hooray!

breaking news.

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Nope, not the president’s reelection. Or any number of the meaningful choices made on Tuesday — including to send more women to Congress, to expand the privileges that come with marriage to more people who love each other. I’m totally psyched about those things. Lots of folks on the internet (well, the parts of the internet I frequent) have written smartly and thoughtfully about Tuesday’s events, so I’m focusing on savory leek bread pudding. Yep, you heard me. There were leeks at the farm this week (my second-last pick-up) and then I saw this recipe, so I made a special trip to the store yesterday. Yoga was canceled, so I had an evening to let things simmer on the stove and bake in the oven. Yum. I made this with whole milk instead of milk and cream, and I left out the chives in favor of more thyme. This is a wonderfully creamy, comforting meal. And this lucky Rooster is heating it up for breakfast right now.

Also, this. I do not get tired of Boh’s sweetness. I hope you’re not sick of it either.

More Snowbird, slowly but surely. Time to eat some leek bread pudding and get myself to the coffee shop to write. Happy Thursday!

roasted tomato soup and a sleeve.

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Well, and this Peanut Butter Popcorn. I doubled the amount of popcorn so that there would be a better ratio of savory/not so bad for me : sweet/bad for me, and I’m happy with that decision. (Plus, there was more popcorn.) This totally helped me power through a lot of comments for my students yesterday.

And here’s that soup: Heidi’s Roasted Tomato Soup from Super Natural Cooking. This one has been in my fall and winter rotation for a couple of years now, and every time I make it I am oh-so-happy.

Last night’s debate gave me some dedicated sleeve knitting time — one down, one to go!

Boh doesn’t seem anywhere near as excited about this as I am. (Maybe that’s because I made him wait until I bound off the sleeve to go for today’s walk…)

Also, thanks for all of your ideas and comments about my mice! I don’t want to jinx anything, but so far so good. I’ve caught a few, and I’ve filled every gap I can find with steel wool. I also got some pouches of spearmint and peppermint labeled as natural, pet- friendly mouse deterrent. I figure it can’t hurt, especially with my critter-filled attic and earthen floor basement. Despite last night’s temps in the high 30s, I found no evidence of mice in the kitchen this morning! Hooray! I’m going to wait a few days to move everything back into the half of the kitchen I moved into the dining room, but I’m optimistic.

field mice and snowbird.

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This is what my battle with the mice has turned into: the contents of my knife drawer and my silverware drawer are on the dining room table. Also, any pots and pans that normally hang out on the stove are here too. I’ve emptied out the space underneath the sink, as well as the drawers the mice seem drawn to. Everything has been cleaned and disinfected, and the traps are baited and set. If I can convince them — through encouragement (in the form of the all natural spearmint packets the hardware store sells that convince mice to move on) and with a little bit of violence (there are rules, as K would say) — to relocate (again, physically, and in some cases, also spiritually) before it gets too cold, I’ll be able to reinhabit my kitchen and enjoy the rest of fall. If I can’t, well…I don’t want to think about that.

Instead, I’ll knit on another project started long ago: Snowbird. I had gotten as far as the collar and the raglan increases, and then the pattern has you start the sleeves before working the body. I was about 20 rows into one of the sleeves. I worked on this for about an hour last night, and I remembered why this was sort of slow going: reverse stockinette. I think I need to focus on relaxing my hands while purling. Or something. Good thing I love the idea of this sweater.

All right. Back to Monday, which for me, means writing midterm comments for my students.

signs.

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I don’t watch Game of Thrones, but I’m pretty sure nothing says “Winter is coming” like a baby mouse scurrying around my dish rack. (Filled, of course, with no longer clean dishes.) This guy hid in this jar-shaped glass when he saw me. After I took his picture, I escorted him to the bottom of the driveway. And then I began the process of investigating for evidence of mice, and scrubbing and disinfecting everything. My love of old houses  means I’m familiar with this process, but I was a little cranky about discovering this mouse late on Tuesday night just as I had finished all of my prep for my Wednesday morning class. Sigh. I understand that the mice are just looking for a cozy place to hunker down. I’m willing to negotiate: they can have the basement (which has an earthen floor — there’s no way I can keep critters out of there), but the kitchen is off limits. Hopefully I can convince them that it is in their best interest to agree to my terms now, before the cold really sets in.

But enough about that. How about some pleasant signs that cooler weather is upon us?

I wore my wurm cowl yesterday. And I totally want another one.

I drank my Thursday morning latte pretty quickly at the coffee shop yesterday. (And finally finished a workable draft of that fellowship application I’ve been complaining about!)

I wrapped myself in my stripe study shawl and sat on the porch with my first cup of coffee this morning.

Aren’t the leaves lovely?

I’ve been spinning! These are Targhee singles in the Sprout colorway from the Hello Yarn Fiber Club (April 2011). In the background you can see what are probably my last snapdragons of the season. Even if winter is still a ways off, the first frost is near. I picked those at the farm on Tuesday afternoon. Happy Friday!